Free Spirit Mind

It’s hot.

Really damn hot. I honestly can’t remember a summer this hot… though I’m sure I’m wrong. It just seems to be exceptionally hot.

How hot is it?

It’s been hitting around 108F – 110F at the peak, but it’s not cooling off significantly at night. When I got home from work at 8pm tonight it was still 103F. My thermostat is programmable. I have it set to start out in the morning at 75F and then, after we’ve left for work, allow the temperature to rise to 85F. It kicks back on a half hour before I get home, but lately it’s been 85 degrees in the house when I get home. Indeed, it’s been running steadily for two hours now and it’s only just hit 82 degrees in the house.

It’s been like this for nearly two weeks straight, and there’s no end in sight.

I’m ready for a break from this heat.

It’s making me cranky. I haven’t done any yard work since June…

Of course, maybe it’s just me. A year ago I worked outdoors in the field all the time. For years I worked outside all summer long. It never seemed this bad. Maybe I was acclimated then, and now I’m just not used to it anymore.

Still… Fall and winter cannot come fast enough.

Liberty has been with us for a month now and is looking much improved. Her mange is disappearing, and her hair growing back in. She’s still very shy and extremely cowed, but she’s getting better. We’ve been able to go out on some field trips and have taken her out to the park and to friends homes where she’s gotten to mingle with other people and pets. It seems to be helping.

We took her in to the vet for the first of her heart worm visits two weeks ago. The vet took some chest X-Rays to check for existing scarring on the heart and lungs. There was none, so she was declared to be a good candidate for the heart worm treatment. The actual initial heart worm treatment would take place in two weeks after she’d had a pretreatment.

Heart worms carry a bacteria with them, and when you kill the heart worm the bacteria also flood the body, so the vet wanted to put her on doxycycline, an antibiotic, first as a pretreatment to kill all of the bacteria before starting her on the actual Immiticide. When she does go and get her first Immiticide treatment she’ll have to be in the hospital at least overnight so that they can monitor her for any blockages that could cause a potential heart attack, stroke, or organ damage.

She’s almost done with her antibiotic treatment, which means it’s almost time for her first heartworm treatment. We’ve so far raised just over $600 to cover the $1,600 it will cost to complete the treatment, which covered the pre-treatment and a little extra, but we’re still almost $1,000 short of paying for her total treatment. I feel bad asking for money, but that’s $1,000 we really don’t have.

So here’s the deal: If you donate $50 or more, I will host a website for you for free for up to two years at my webhosting company. If you are in the Dallas / Fort Worth or North Texas area and donate $100 or more, my wife’s catering company will prepare and deliver a custom designed cake (serving up to 30 people) to the event of your choice.

Any funds received in excess of the amount of her vet bills will be donated to a local animal charity or no kill shelter.

We had Liberty’s teeth checked out today. The news was not pretty. Somehow she had managed to wear down almost all of her bottom teeth. The only teeth she has left in her bottom jaw are her canines. We don’t know how it happened, but given her tendency to bite the lead when we have her on a leash, we suspect she may have been chained up outside and tried to gnaw her way through a the chain until her teeth were literally gone.

Other than that, the Vet said she only had some mild tartar and gingival pockets. A bit of cleaning and scraping will fix that right up.

Liberty has an appointment on Sunday Friday to get chest X-rays to see how far the heartworms have progressed, which will help us to figure out how aggressive the drug treatment can be. If the parasites have already invaded her heart or lungs, the treatment will have to be much slower and drawn out. As the heartworms die, their little pieces can clog arteries and cause all manner of problems from a heart attack to a stroke, even liver or organ failure if they block blood vessels supplying crucial oxygenated blood to that organ. The more invasive the infection, the slower we have to go with the treatment and the longer her hospital stays will be to monitor her for complications.

It’s not a pretty picture, but we’ve raised enough money to get started. All told we’ve raised $500 towards her vet bills. We’ve still got a long way to go, but I’ll keep ya’ll posted on her health as we find out more.

Any funds received in excess of the amount of her vet bills will be donated to a local animal charity or no kill shelter.

Late on the 4th of July, this little angel found her way onto our front porch.

Walking out to my truck late at night, I heard a rustling in the bushes planted in a garden in our front yard. Emerging from the shadows walked another odd looking shadow. It was dark, and late at night, and this creature made a bee-line for me, initially giving me a fright. But I soon saw the head down/tail down posture and recognized a horribly submissive dog. She came right up to me and sat down at my feet, looking up at me with these sad, deep brown eyes. We named her Liberty.

Liberty literally came to us begging for food, water, and a safe place to sleep. This took a lot for such a timid dog. While we don’t know her history, she had been spayed at some point before she found herself on the streets. She’s very shy and cowers at the slightest touch, and yet she’s incredibly affectionate and wants nothing more than to be pet and cuddled, though it takes her a while to warm up and relax.

After taking her inside and letting her get accustomed to our other rescue dogs, Espresso and Rascal, we inspected her and found her covered with fleas and ticks, her hair falling out, and her ears infected and filthy. Her claws had not been trimmed nor worn down for some time – they were so long that her toes for forced to splay out. That couldn’t be comfortable. First step: grooming and bathtime!

I can’t recall the last time I saw water that brown. She was a very dirty girl! We also washed off and killed literally hundreds of fleas and a half dozen ticks. It took a couple of treatments of permethrin based dips to kill all the fleas, but after successive baths she was finally flea free. We took the time to trim her nails, being careful not to trim too far and nick the overgrown cuticle.

Finally, it was time to take a trip to the vet for a checkup. Everyone at the vet’s office immediately fell in love with our shy little angel. But the news was not good. Her ears were inflamed and possibly infected from the dirt and grime in them. They found tapeworm evidence in her stool, and the skin problems looked like more than just a flea allergy. It was very likely that she has demodectic mange as well.

Then came the worst news. She tested positive for heartworm. It wasn’t so long ago that heartworm was a death sentence for a canine, and my heart sank when I heard the news. The Dr. said that it wasn’t a death sentence, that there were cures, but they weren’t cheap and would take weeks, even months, before she would be cured. Costs could exceed $1,600 just for the heartworm.

My head dropped. I was prepared to spend hundreds of dollars to get our little angel healthy and happy, but we just don’t have the thousands it would take to cure heartworm. The vet told us that starting her on a heartworm preventative would reduce the lifespan of the parasitic heartworms that made their homes in the blood vessels between her heart and lungs. While that would reduce the amount of damage they would do, it would not prevent it all, and she could still suffer horrible damage to her heart and lungs. Damage that would seriously impact her health and quality of life, or possibly even kill her.

We’re determined to find a solution however. I spent the few hundred dollars we could afford for the vet services and started her on a flea treatment and heartworm prevention regime. In the meantime I put the word out to friends of ours across the internet and across the nation. We’re exploring our options right now, but time is limited. Every day and week that goes by is more damage that is being done to her heart and lungs.

Edit: OK. Too many people are asking to help, and as much as my pride says not to, I’m going to open this up for donations. I feel bad doing it, so here’s the deal: If you donate $50 or more, I will host a website for you for free for up to two years at my webhosting company. If you are in the Dallas / Fort Worth or North Texas area and donate $100 or more, my wife’s catering company will prepare and deliver a custom designed cake (serving up to 30 people) to the event of your choice.

Any funds received in excess of the amount of her vet bills will be donated to a local animal charity or no kill shelter.

This paypal account is linked to my Web hosting company account, so that’s the email you’ll see if you choose to donate.

I quite like this.

The two songs REALLY work well together!